Box Set: Vampire Love Story Series (Four paranormal romance novels) Read online

  Her eyebrows lifted. “By yourself?”

  “Yeah, I do most things by myself these days.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “So, where are you headed? You look as if you’re dressed to go to a party.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I’m heading over to a party in Victorville. I was thinking you might want to come.”

  “You drove all the way out here to see if I wanted to come to a party?”

  “Well, I didn’t have your number, did I?”

  “How did you get here? There are no cars outside.”

  “Some friends dropped me off.”

  “And what if I wasn’t home?”

  “Then I was going to call my friends to come back and get me. Your light was on so I told them to take off. What’s up with the third degree?”

  “There is no third degree. I’m just flattered, I guess.”

  “You should be. If you haven’t noticed, I look smoking hot right now. I don’t know how often a hot woman comes to your door and asks you to escort her to a party.”

  “That happens like...never,” I said.

  “Then do you want to scratch your pathetic dinner plans and come with me?”

  I grinned. “Sure, let me grab a jacket.”

  I went to the closet and did just that. When I returned, Yari was staring at me with a big smile.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You look good, Josiah. Real good. I just might want a taste before we go.” Yari leaned into me and kissed my lips. I kissed her back. I had a lot of pent-up energy considering that I subscribe to the no-jacking-off rule before a fight. Or a date, for that matter.

  Her lips felt soft and tender. She was such an incredible kisser. I pressed her up against my wall in my hallway and turned her body around. Her dress felt unbelievable. It was silky and soft. I placed my hands around her body and onto her thighs. Her perfectly-shaped buttocks pressed against my groin. I kissed her neck and slid my hands up the front of her body until both my hands were cupping her breasts. She turned her head and kissed me. Her tongue was soft and wet. Her pheromones were flying off the chart, up my nose. She smelled incredible, and even her saliva smelled refreshing.

  “In my entire life,” I said, “no one has ever turned me on the way you do.”

  Yari stopped and looked at me with a tenderness I had not seen from her before. “That’s good,” she said. “We should get going.”

  Then she walked to my door and outside my house. I was left there, turned on, but at least I did have a place to go with that pent-up power.

  Chapter Twelve

  I drove us to Victorville in about a half an hour. Victorville is one of those little desert cities along Highway 15 that people pass on their way to Las Vegas. The city is in the high desert. It still has an old-fashioned feel to it. It was a place where a young Clint Eastwood might squint and settle a score, in exactly that order. Him and me both.

  Anyway, the party was another thirty minutes off the highway, and when we finally arrived at the house, I pulled into a long, narrow driveway. I noticed there weren’t many cars out front. I also noticed a lot of black birds flying around outside. They appeared to be the same birds that had been hovering around Flatlands. I looked up through the windshield at the house in front of us. It was, as Tommy would say, ginormous. It had a stately feel to it and seemed better suited for a governor or senator, ,not a place you would expect to be in the heart of Victorville.

  “Am I going to know anyone at this party?” I asked Yari.

  “Atticai and Lena should be here, along with Wyatt and the others.” Yari looked down at my wrist. “Your wrist seems to be healing.”

  “Yeah, the teeth marks look more like I got branded than bitten.”

  “You know that Wyatt feels bad about that.”

  “I bet he does. I still have no clue why a grown man would want to bite me.”

  “You can ask him, yourself.” Yari motioned to my rear view mirror. Sure enough, the infamous black van pulled up behind my truck.

  I opened my door and got out.

  Atticai stepped out of the van’s side door with his held high as if he was royalty. He turned and saw me, but gave no indication of recognizing me. His face looked paler than before. Lena came out after him. She saw me and ran over to me.

  “Hey, you!” she said to me.

  “Hey yourself,” I replied.

  “What? Are you too good for me?” she asked, putting both hands on her curvy hips.

  “Why you say that?”

  “Ever hear of returning a call?”

  I looked at Atticai. I wanted to see if he would be annoyed that his girlfriend was calling me on the telephone. Again, he had zero expression on his face. He just continued walking up to the house.

  “Oh, sorry. I’ve been training hard for my next fight and turned my phone off. You know, to cut down on the distractions.” I winced at the moment that last sentence left my mouth. Yari whistled next to me.

  “Well, it’s good to know that I’m only a distraction.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I’m just busting your balls. I know you’re busy. I was just wondering what happened to you. I guess I now know why. You look as if you’ve lost some weight. Damn, boy, you look skinny!” Lena leaned in to pinch my stomach, but Yari promptly blocked her hand with her own hand.

  “You don’t have to touch,” Yari snapped at Lena.

  “Wow, Yari. Down, girl. I was just playing around.”

  “Nobody has time for your games,” Yari responded.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had already marked him.”

  “I haven’t marked anybody. Why don’t you go find Atticai and you can play your games with him?”

  “Fine, I’m going to go inside.” Lena looked at me sadly and walked off.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I said to Yari. “She was just fooling around.”

  “Look, you two can play grab ass all you want. I’m going inside, too.” Yari stormed off, and I was left alone with the guy who had enjoyed my wrist as a snack, just a couple of weeks earlier.

  “Chicks, dude.” Wyatt laughed. “I have no clue what any of that was about.”

  “You’re telling me,” I said.

  We shook our heads some more in one of the strangest moments of male bonding I’ve ever had, and then he showed me into the house. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but I know I wasn’t expecting this. Except for a few dozen flickering votive candles, the whole house was entirely dark. I stopped in the foyer, but Wyatt urged me along. Deeper in the house I saw that there were candles placed just about everywhere, in every room and on every table. The candles provided just enough light so that I didn’t run into furniture, but not enough to make me feel anywhere near to the concept of comfortable.

  What the hell was going on?

  As I walked through the small party, I noticed a lot of couples making out. I had been to a lot of parties in my life but never one like this. It reminded me of a junior high make-out party. Well, everything but the insane candles. If I saw one Ouija board, I would be outta here.

  Anyway, I made my way to the kitchen since I was starving. There was no food anywhere. Just tons of alcohol. I needed to eat something ASAP.

  I opened the refrigerator, and I hit the jackpot. Chicken wings. A whole plate of them. I looked around to make sure I wasn’t snagging someone else’s food. Well, I was, but they didn’t have to know about it. I grabbed eight wings and sat at the table, near a stack of napkins and cups. I put the sticky wings on a napkin and poured myself some of what appeared to be straight tequila.

  I took my time with the wings, enjoying each bite. When I polished off the last knobby bite, I quickly downed the two or three shots of tequila I had poured. I blew out of my mouth, the second the alcohol went down my throat. I learned that trick a couple years back. Somehow, blowing out of your mouth and not inhaling through your nose helps with the harsh aftertaste.r />
  Almost immediately, the tequila seemed to be doing its job. I had a decent size buzz going. I felt a little more relaxed, considering I was in a house of full of self-proclaimed spooks. I decided to look for Yari, and see if she would be in a better mood. First, I looked around downstairs and ignored the folks sucking each other’s faces, but she wasn’t in the house.

  I peeked in the backyard but no luck. No Yari. I went back inside and still felt buzzed, then headed upstairs. The second floor was almost entirely dark, and all of the doors were shut. All of them, except one. I had just decided to check it out when a drunk, pale-skinned, bald guy walked out of the open door and straight over to me. Amazingly, he leaned over me and sniffed me.

  Yeah, sniffed me.

  As he did so, he made noises that sounded disturbingly like lip-smacking. The same noises I had made just five minutes earlier when I had come across the chicken wings in the fridge. He continued on, stumbling his way downstairs. I half expected to hear him pitch forward and tumble all the way down. Somehow, amazingly, he made it without busting his ass.

  Just then, Yari walked out of the same room the drunk guy had been in. “You don’t want to be up here, Josiah. Let’s go downstairs.”

  “No problem. I was looking for—”

  But she grabbed my forearm and steered me back down the stairs. As she did so, I couldn’t help but notice the woman’s grip. Sweet Jesus, she was strong. Once back down the stairs, I heard a squawk and saw two gigantic black birds flying in the house. I nearly dove for cover, but someone calmly opened the rear sliding glass door and the birds flew out of the house. Not a single person called attention to them or seemed to care that two big birds had been in the house. I looked around to get a reaction from somebody. Nothing.

  What the hell was going on here?

  Yari led me to one of the downstairs bedrooms. “Let’s go in here,” she said. She then opened the door. The room was lit by a couple of candles in the window still, and there was a mattress with a comforter on the floor. She reclined on the mattress, as I stood there looking at her, dumbstruck. I was still trying to wrap my brain around everything I had just seen, from the candles, to the secret upstairs bedroom, to the damn birds. And now, Yari was leading me to a bed. It seemed like we had skipped a few steps on the way to bed.

  One weird thing at a time, I thought.

  Yari’s eyes were bright and expressive, as if she was amped up on something. So, I started with the obvious question, even though I suspected I already knew the answer. “So, what was going on up there? Drugs?”

  “No one was doing drugs, Josiah, but trust me when I tell you that ‘people’ were having a good time.” She stared at me long and hard, and I wondered if she was one of those having a good time.

  A good time doing what?

  I asked her, “Is this like, one of those sex parties or something? Or maybe is it one of those candle parties, the kind with the MLM recruitment to be a hostess and sell them yourself?”

  She chuckled softly. “Why don’t you lie down next to me?” she asked.

  “Look, if what you wanted is to fool around, then we didn’t have to come to the world’s freakiest party to do it. We could have just stayed at my house. If you want to fool around, I like my own turf better.”

  “World’s freakiest party?” Yari then smiled really big. “Are you scared of these people?” Yari rubbed my leg and was trying to get a rise out of me.

  Which kind of rise? I wasn’t exactly sure. I think she was succeeding at both kinds.

  “I’m not scared. It takes more than a few pale-faced dudes and a house that seems to have zero electricity to scare me.”

  “Oh, this house has electricity.” Yari took her other hand and rubbed it on my upper thigh near the goods. I drew in a slow breath, trying to think of unsexy activities: raking leaves, delivering newspapers, eating Kraft macaroni and cheese. Nope, none of that was working while she traced her slender fingers across my denim-clad legs. I chastised myself: No sex during training!

  Yari was holding a silver flask. She reached up and grabbed a shot glass from the dresser next to her. “This looks clean.” She giggled and poured some red alcohol into the shot glass. She handed me the shot glass. “Try it, Josiah. You’ll love it.”

  “Thanks, but I had some tequila; I’m feeling good.”

  “Trust me, this isn’t tequila.”

  “I don’t want to get wasted. I have to train tomorrow.”

  “Josiah, you’ve been training hard these days. Tonight, let’s have a little fun.” She got up from the mattress and slipped behind me. I was wondering what she was doing until she put her left hand around my waist. She then reached around with her right hand and held up the shot glass full of red liquor.

  I puckered my lips and turned my head away. “I said I don’t want any!”

  Yari kissed my neck. I froze. She hit the right spot. “Try it...for me...please. You know I would never hurt you.”

  I smiled at Yari and said, “I don’t know that to be true.”

  “You need to trust me.” Yari slid her hand down and grabbed my inner thigh. “Please, Josiah, just one sip.”

  I continued to resist the drink. And the more I resisted, the higher Yari’s hand rose up my thigh, massaging as she went. I let out a long, shuddering breath. Honestly, what guy could have resisted her? I clearly wasn’t strong enough. And besides, it was just something to drink, right? If these Goth nut jobs were going to poison me, they would have done it out on the Flatlands, when I drank that weird shit.

  I said, “You promise you’re not trying to kill me?”

  Yari leaned even closer and whispered real softly in my right ear. “I just want you to loosen up, so we can have some fun.”

  Then she thoroughly grabbed my expanding goods, my package snugger than snug in my jeans. I gasped, all the breath leaving my lungs. She continued to massage me, not without considerable skill, I noticed. She knew her way around the goods. I was excited, to say the least. Then she lifted the flask to my helpless lips and gently poured the drink down my throat. It was thick and sweet. It didn’t taste anything like alcohol.

  “All right. I drank it,” I said. “So, now what?”

  “Now, here’s where the fun starts.”

  Yari took me by the hand and led me out of the room, and back to the living room, where partygoers were kissing so deeply and rhythmically, that I suspected some of them were doing the dirty right then and there. But then again, with the absence of any real light, it was hard to tell.

  Yari scanned the room, looking for something. And then she found it. A beautiful blond girl who was sitting close to an equally beautiful brunette. Yari took the blond girl’s hand, who rose from the couch without hesitation or question. The blond, I could see, was lean and supremely sexy. She smiled at me shyly.

  As Yari held our hands, she continued leading us through the undulating party, where we stopped this time in front of a sexy Latina woman who was probably in her early thirties. The blond girl nodded and reached out her own hand. There was a chain reaction going on here that I wasn’t fully getting. The Latina simply nodded and took the proffered hand. Once done, Yari led the three of us back into the same bedroom with the mattress on the floor and locked the door behind us.

  I heard Tommy’s voice in my head, mocking me not to have sex while in training for a big fight.

  I think this is where I swallowed. Hard. What the hell was going on?

  Yari led me to the bed. I went, to say the least, willingly. Without asking or hesitation, the Latina woman took off my shirt, and now the blond girl began kissing my chest. I don’t know what happened to my jeans, but suddenly, they were gone and took my boxers with them.

  That’s when the room started spinning.

  Or maybe it in was my head. But everything kept on spinning until I couldn’t see anything at all. It was a blur. I suspected I had been drugged, but I didn’t care, not with three women swarming around me, touching, kissing, licking. Sucking! All
I could do was feel. And feeling was enough. Hands roamed all over me. My entire body was groped and kissed. Caressed. Teased.

  “I have one rule, girls,” I heard myself say from somewhere seemingly outside my body. “No biting. Everything else is fair game.”

  The next two hours were the greatest two hours of my adult male life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  At some point, I either passed out or fell asleep.

  I opened my eyes and, as my eyes adjusted, I could finally see. I was alone in the room. I pulled out my cell from my pocket. The lighted display read 2:12 a.m. Four hours of my life had just vanished. I got up, and my legs felt wobbly. It had not been an Partylite candle party. It had been a party of the other type.

  What the hell had been in that drink?

  I slowly got dressed and weeble-wobbled to the bedroom door and then made my way to the living room. There were still a lot of couples making out. Smoke from the many candles hung suspended in the air. The whole scene was surreal and bizarre, and now I was a part of it. I needed fresh air. With my legs feeling a little stronger, I headed out the front door.

  I stood on the brick steps and took in a lot of fresh air, which did wonders to clear my head. And that’s when I heard the sounds of crying. Off to the right, in a small patch of grass near the side of the house, was a swing hanging from the thick branch of a tree. Lena was sitting alone and crying softly, the sounds of her muffled sobs reaching me in the quiet night air. I walked over to her.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Lena looked up at me. “Hi, Josiah.” She wiped her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It doesn’t seem as if it’s nothing,” I said. “What’s going on? Where’s Atticai?”

  “Atticai left with a couple of his friends.”

  I looked over and noticed the van was still in the driveway.

  “The van is still here. Is he coming back?”

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t like to tell me what he does.”

  I paused. “That’s a pretty weird party going on in there.” I didn’t mention the foursome I had, although thanks to the power of that witchy potion I had drank, I was beginning to remember less and less of it. Which was a damn shame.